Don't schools just tell you if you're in the bottom 50%? I didn't think they listed you as "bottom 10%" which is why I have trouble believing this nonsense...

I'm at a bottom tier one school, and the only truth I can readily verify in this post is that unless you're at HYSCCN, you need to be anywhere from the top 10% to the top 33%-40% for the "BIG LAW" jobs that pay over 100,000 base salary.

large firms recruit at a few dozen schools but go deeper into the class at higher ranked schools. For example if you are at yale and have a pulse you get a big firm job. but have to be in the top 1/3 at a decent school like fordham to get a big firm job. However the overwhelming majority of bottom 1/3 at good schools like michigan,virginia, penn have tough time getting large firm jobs (large firm= 125k and above). It is actually harder to get a big firm job from cornell (top 14) than UCLA (ranked 15th). Firms dip lower into the UCLA pool, but the bottom 1/3 at ucla, and boalt, also have trouble. Below is a list of schools and how far firms dip into their classes1. yale (if you have a pulse you are in, no matter where in the class you rank) note yale is the only school good enough to not have to differentiate between its students (harvard is too large and the caliber of student body does vary greatly, so grades are much more important at a place like harvard than reaching honors is at yale)2. harvard, stanford, columbia (only the weirdos can't get a big firm gig, and even most of them are deemed eccentric instead of psycho) only bottom 10% have any trouble.3. chicago (just a notch below 2)4. nyu (bottom 1/3 actually has trouble, more trouble than their columbia or chicago counterparts)5. virgina, michigan, penn (bottom 1/3 who are not minorities are usually out of luck, and if you are bottom 1/2 and not mr./mrs. personality you will have trouble.6. northwestern, duke, ucla, georgetown (similar to 5, but students are in ever so slightly worse shape) bottom 1/3 almost never get a big firm job and bottom 1/2 have real trouble. top 50% are set.7. cornell and boalt (bottom 50% almost never get big firm jobs). firms really do not like the bottom 1/2 at berkley because boalt uses unconventional criteria to select student body (LSAT not that important) for boalt the top 50% actually do as well as the schools in group 5, and better than the schools in group six, but the bottom 50 do significantly worse. cornell students in top 50% do really well in the ny market (but terribly nationally), bottom 50% almost always out of luck.8. texas, bu, bc, gw, w&l, fordham, vandy, usc, hastings (only top 1/3 get big firm gigs)9. schools like umn, uwash, washu are generally not on the radar screen of big firms and students at these schools have to do a lot of leg work to get major market attention.10. if you go to any other school you will have great difficulty getting a big firm job, unless you are top 5%-10% of your class at a law school in a BIG MARKET (cardozo, brooklyn, loyola-la, etc.)

Big law firms are usually willing to skim off of the tippy top at every law school provided you have excellent credentials. It just so happens that T14 schools usually get first pick and are more readily sought out. Whereas if you're outside a T14 you're gonna have to work for it a little more, spread your resume around a little more, and hobknob a lil more. Overall it's more effort if you're not in a top law school.

I work for a Very Big firm (in DC) who only recruits from the T10 schools. But there are a few that have slid in (i.e., from GW, NYL, American, Howard). Granted, there is only one from each of those schools, it goes to show that if you have great grades and a lil' more, you could get lucky!

I wonder what the 'a little more' is, with respect to howard, especially.

Who knows? Just get your resume out there wherever you are, cross your fingers and see what happens. I don't even really like this thread here because what if someone said no? Would OP then just not apply to any big firms he/she was interested in? That'd be bad.

One great thing about being a student these days is that there are so many firms that if you get your resume out there and it looks decent you will at least get some interviews and be in the running.

The people I see struggling in the job search quite often just have too narrow a focus for their qualifications (as in "middle of the class T2, I have to work at a big firm in DC that practices international law.")

Either that or people that say things like "I've applied to 20 firms, and I didn't get an interview with any of them. I guess I'm out of luck." No! Only say you're out of luck when you applied to 600 or 700 or however many firms all around.

I guess what my point is is that that's the great thing about law school- it's a 3 year job search but you have nothing to lose (except your pride!) So no pressure!

question- how "actively" do they recruit from those at a T20 outside of the T14? i've generally got word at my school that, because we're not T14 and only T20, only 1/3 of our class has a chance at "biglaw".

I think that once a school is outside of the top 14, it really just depends upon what legal market they are in. For instance, Loyola (LA) grads get BIGLAW jobs all of the time. I'm sure that some ITT-Kent (in Chicago) grads also get BIGLAW jobs. At non T14s though, the applicant will have to have something that stands out, e.g., good grades and/or law review/moot court.

Many big firms interview on campus at Fordham - probably all the signficant ones with New York offices. I think that a good number of them interview at Cardozo and Brooklyn as well, but you should ask. But remember - if you don't finish near the top (don't ask me what percentage. I won't pretend to know. Too many people here pull numbers out of their asses), you won't get anywhere with these firms. Exceptions for students with solid hard science degrees.

The default to what would constitute a "BIGLAW" is probably who's on the NALP Directory. These are the firms with summer associate programs that interview on campus after the first year. So, if you want to know about a school and who recruits there, NALP is a good place to start. You can also go the websites of these firms, and check where the lawyers went to school. Many of these sites allow to search attorneys by where they went to law school or undergrad.